October 2018 Journal of the Institution of Environmental Sciences CONTENTS > How and why are the oceans changing? he number of people living on Earth will grow to due to the scales of change and variability, and the FEATURE 14 nine billion by 2050, with the population rising commitment, infrastructure and investment demanded in Exploring submarine volcanoes EDITORIAL fastest in low-lying coastal plains and cities. Driven the marine realm. Added to this, integrated cross-sectoral Ken Rubin describes our changing view of the seabed and its inhabitants, as we discover T more about underwater volcanoes. by growing public and political awareness, attention is approaches in businesses and governments can bring turning urgently to the ocean and coastal regions to about changes through influence and participative provide security for people and economic infrastructure processes, as much as by legislation and by an integrated against the sea’s dangers, including maritime accidents, vision of the land–sea interface. Finally, there is a need FEATURE 27 extreme weather, flooding and submarine geohazards. for appropriate, smart financial and policy instruments The cetaceans of the British Isles and a changing marine environment At the same time, there is a focus on the sea’s ability to de-risk investment in sustainable activities and recover Chiara Giulia Bertulli and Peter Evans describe ongoing shifts in abundance and to provide food, clean energy and minerals, whilst the economic potential of industries eroded by past distribution. protecting and restoring the marine ecosystems upon ecosystem degradation. which 90 per cent of marine economic benefits depend. Systematic, geospatial, continuous data from the ocean FEATURE 38 Making sense of the global changes and variability in the is needed to raise our awareness of the basin–decadal Bringing oceans back from the brink ocean, such as warming, acidification, oxygen depletion context of ocean change and to monitor the effectiveness of Louise Heaps discusses the conditions needed for achieving a sustainable blue and the shifting of many marine species, will enable us management interventions. Technology revolutions in big economy. to unravel the causes and help our search for solutions. data, artificial intelligence and marine autonomous and The problems are fearsomely complex, not least due to robotic systems will have a major impact in developing cumulative effects over time and space and multiple the ocean economy. And, as with space science, many OPINION 46 feedbacks. All of these are driven by a mix of economic innovations originally developed to explore the deep Surfers against plastic incentives, policies, governance, human behaviours sea are now ready to be brought into everyday use for Paddy Fowler speaks to Hugo Tagholm about the crisis of plastic pollution in the and natural processes. So some marine systems are marine operations. oceans and on beaches worldwide. particularly stressed or vulnerable: This collection of papers explores these complex questions • coastal zones squeezed by sea level rise and competing through specific examples and looks beyond the problems demands; to possible solutions. • coral reefs, which cover just 0.1 per cent of the ocean’s INTRODUCTION 4 ANALYSIS 20 area but are home to 25 per cent of marine species; What do we know about our effect on the oceans? Improving air quality: How ports can help • polar regions, where the most rapid environmental Edward Hill OBE is Executive Director Carolyn Roberts shows how much we still have to learn about Michael Bull outlines the sources of air pollution around ports, the Earth’s largest ecosystem. and the solutions being proposed and implemented. change is occurring whilst becoming ever more of the UK’s National Oceanography accessible to human activities; and Centre. He is particularly interested in CASE STUDY 8 ANALYSIS 32 • the deep sea, a scientific, technological, economic and advocating the case for sustained ocean Climate Linked Atlantic Sector Science: A new UK marine Focus on the coast geopolitical frontier with vast economic potential but observations. He holds a BSc in Applied science programme Natasha Bradshaw outlines the increasing need for integrated fragile ecosystems. Mathematics from the University of Penny Holliday explains how sustained observations, the management of the coast to keep up with the emerging interest in development of models and technological advances will provide and pressures on our oceans. Sheffield and an MSc and a PhD in essential knowledge of and robust predictions for the changing The challenge now is to move beyond identifying Physical Oceanography from Bangor marine environment. problems to creating solutions. A key dimension that University. He has served on numerous frames solutions is the need for long-term perspectives, national and international advisory panels. Guest editor: Carolyn Roberts is a water resource Cover design & internal illustrations: Lexie Mac is an management consultant and a Vice President of the illustrator working in London, she has a passion for the IES. She was the first Frank Jackson Professor of the environment which is explored in her work. She is also The environmental SCIENTIST provides a platform to discuss key issues within the Environment at Gresham College, formerly Director of the part of the IES administrative team and is currently environmental sciences, hosting original articles written by professionals, academics and experts working across the sector. Environmental Sustainability Knowledge Transfer Network writing and illustrating an educational childrens book The journal of the Institution of Environmental Sciences at the University of Oxford and currently Entrepreneur-in- on ocean plastics. The views expressed in the journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily Residence at Keele University. www.lexiemac.co.uk Volume 27 No 3 | ISSN: 0966 8411 reflect IES views or policy. 2 | environmental SCIENTIST | October 2018 October 2018 | environmental SCIENTIST | 3 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION nvironmental scientists are finding increasing evidence of human-induced damage to oceans Eat vast scale – the destruction of fish and coral ecosystems, massive gyrating pools of plastic refuse. Almost all the plastic ever produced is still with us, and according to research at the University of the Highlands and Islands, an additional 8 million tonnes of plastic litter enter the ocean each year. The effects are that about 100,000 marine mammals and a million seabirds per year are killed by eating plastic or becoming entangled in it – this includes fishing nets, which make up 10 per What do we know about cent of the litter. Australian research published by the USA’s National Academy of Sciences in 2015 found that 90 per cent of all seabirds had ingested plastic, and it took up 10 per cent of their average bodyweight. Harrowing photographs show that the contents of seabirds’ stomachs our effect on the oceans? include cigarette lighters, toothbrushes and tampon casings. Plastic has also been found inside turtles, fish and dolphins, and wrapped around organisms, effectively strangling them. By 2025, there could be 1 Carolyn Roberts shows how much tonne of plastic in the ocean for every 3 tonnes of finfish. we still have to learn about the DEEP OCEAN DATA GATHERING Earth’s largest ecosystem. Oceans are the least well-known major component of the Earth’s environment. Early exploration of the oceans depended upon imprecise ship surveys, done by dropping lead weights on ropes for depth measurement and trailing thermometers on cables. Painfully slowly, observations were built up into generalised maps. By the early 21st century, the complex configuration of abyssal plains, ridges and trenches reflecting the slow shifts of tectonic plates was sufficiently well known to appear on Google Maps. However, less than 10 per cent of the ocean’s 1.3 billion km3 has been fully explored, and marine scientists still have only a rudimentary understanding of anything below about 2 km. The lack of progress is illustrated by the fact that, in 1960 when oceanographers Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard were lowered 11 km down into the Mariana Trench in a bathyscaphe they saw very little because disturbed sediment made the water milky; they thought they saw a halibut, but nothing else. The feat has rarely been repeated, despite Richard Branson’s plan for DeepFlight Challenger to ‘fly’ to the bottom of the trench in 2011; the trial was quietly abandoned in 2014 when the submersible proved unable to withstand the pressures at that depth and developed fractures. Even though we can walk on the Moon, human technology is not yet sufficiently good for scientists regularly to explore the ocean floor in person. Conversely, data gathered by the equipment carried by robotic submersibles, long-distance drifters powered by wind, wave and solar energy, and sensors on satellites, have driven our knowledge forward dramatically. Autonomous vehicles can photograph and bring back sediment and mineral samples for laboratory analysis. October 2018 | environmental SCIENTIST | 5 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION Sea-bed instruments report changes in temperature, Not only do geological inputs influence the biosphere, current direction, salinity and algal content at increasing but the converse is also true: animals influence chemical frequencies. Satellite-borne altimeters, in combination cycling in the oceans. Large mammals play a previously with drone vessels, drifters or wave gliders and buoys,